John McCain

Somehow it’s “news” that a senior, unnamed official claims all the bad stuff that we don’t know happened, or actually never quite happened, was due to Trump alone. And, of course, all the good stuff that we do know happened was only because of noble, smart, patriotic, and visionary officials like the writer and his friends. The recent op-ed is yet another episode in an endless resistance cartoon, another pathetic effort of self-important grandees to undo by fiat what the voters did by voting in 2016.

For the late Senator John McCain, war was a first resort, the obvious answer to most any international problem, whatever the specifics. If only Washington would impose its will abroad, Pax America would emerge.

We hope the publication of the anonymous op-ed in The New York Times galvanizes the President to cull out those establishment Republican hacks, Democrats and Deep State operatives who have been slow walking his policies, but until he puts someone who shares his agenda in charge of White House Personnel that is unlikely to happen.

Trump got a lot of mileage out of the perception that many Republican leaders, no matter how personally decent, were content to lose to liberals. McCain was most celebrated as a maverick when he sided with liberals and often condemned when he stood up to them. McCain wasn't wrong that there are bigger things than Republican versus Democrat, Left versus Right. Even those conservative detractors should celebrate his virtues now.

The notable thing about McCain, who even before he fell ill was approaching the end of his Senate career and whose own runs for the White House were in the past, was that he never felt the need to even feign positive feelings for his party's leader. In a way, the two men together, McCain and Trump, struck a blow for genuineness amid the phoniness of official Washington. The relationship between the two men ended as badly as it began. But always, and rarely for Washington, without pretense.

John McCain was a war hawk, and proud of it. But by 2006, the wars he had championed had cost the Republican Party both houses of Congress. In 2008, when he was on the ballot, those wars helped cost him the presidency. By 2016, the Republican majority would turn its back on McCain and his protege, Sen. Lindsey Graham, and nominate Donald Trump, who said he would seek to get along with Russia and extricate America from the wars into which McCain had helped plunge the country.

The Times is perfectly willing, nay eager, to celebrate the memory of John McCain. After all, his most conspicuous activities these past few years have been as an anti-Trump activist. But back in the day, the Times was quick to put John McCain in his place just as soon has he tried to abandon his role as a ‘maverick,’ i.e., unreliable, but essentially pro-Democratic, trouble maker. Like Dewar’s Scotch, the Times has this to be said for it: it never varies.

There seems ample room to debate the wisdom of this American intervention or that one without discarding the overriding wisdom that projection of national strength warns the screwballs and America-haters to keep their distance. Because if they don’t, you know what? They’ll run eventually, and head-long, into the heirs of John McCain — lovers, like him, of freedom; imitators of his worthy example; telling foreign enemies, in McCain-like tones of defiance, just where they can get off.

The war in Afghanistan isn’t a regional or tribal conflict, it isn’t a war on “terrorism,” it isn’t a war on narco-warlords (even though 90% of the worlds illicit opium originates there); it is a war between the values of Islam and the values of the Western Enlightenment, and if you refuse to understand it and fight it on those terms the war in Afghanistan will never be over and certainly never be won.

Never in the annals of Washington DC’s history have three bureaucrats been so anxious to shout their failures from every rooftop. But that’s exactly what Strzok, Clapper, and especially Brennan have been doing by blasting Trump for not picking a fight with Putin over their failure to stop Russian interference in the 2016 election.

What Democrats, Trump critics like Senator John McCain, and Witch Hunters like Robert Mueller wanted President Trump to do would jeopardize the lives and safety of American military and intelligence officers around the world and make international relations infinitely more complex and difficult.

Mitt Romney has made it clear he is running to be the leader of the #NeverTrump resistance, not to be Utah’s junior Senator. So, being nice to Kim Jong Un has a better chance of getting him to abandon his nuclear weapons than being nice to Mitt Romney has of getting him to support Trump.

Even though Dr. Mike Kennedy beat Romney 51 – 49 at the Republican State Convention, due to Utah’s arcane nomination process, the statewide run-off decides the nominee. Romney is spending millions of dollars to buy his way into the U.S. Senate, so he can be the establishment’s Senate “COUNTERWEIGHT” to President Trump’s America First agenda.

With her radical leftist views on same sex marriage and opposition to the Republican Party’s platform position on abortion, the only thing worse than having John McCain in the Senate would be for Governor Doug Ducey to appoint his liberal wife Cindy to succeed him.

These are the same networks that opportunistically whacked McCain as an obstacle to Obama 10 years ago. Take ABC's Terry Moran on "Nightline" on Oct. 13, 2008: "attacks from John McCain and Sarah Palin ... stoked the anger at Republican rallies, where there have been reports of attendees yelling things like 'terrorist' and 'kill him.'" Moran asked Biden, "Are you at all concerned in this home stretch for Sen. Obama's safety?" Perhaps ABC should start demanding that ABC apologize publicly.

McCain has a war record of pure heroism. He has a political record of real achievement, but also perhaps more than his share of the controversy that goes with politics. So which to emphasize in what might be McCain's final days? Here's a thought: Why not dwell on the good, especially since it was so good? When someone dies, it really is fitting to look at the best that person did. And John McCain lived a great, patriotic life, doing more in service to the U.S. than his critics, or almost anyone else. When he dies, why not remember that?

In her testimony yesterday, Gina Haspel gave conservatives a rare insight into how operatives of the Deep State think and work – and it should scare everyone who saw it or has read about it. What’s more, Haspel gave conservatives concerned about Russia, China and the war Islam has declared on the West absolutely no reason to vote for her.

The easy political move for Senator Paul would have been to vote “NO” on Mike Pompeo and claim it was a vote based on principle, the tougher and better move for the country, and Senator Paul’s policy goals, was to get the commitments on policy and vote “YES.”

CHQ Chairman Richard A. Viguerie and 92 leaders of CAP have issued a statement backing Mike Pompeo for Secretary for State saying, "Pompeo’s vast experience across multiple levels of government has demonstrated his commitment to protecting America’s interests, and make him uniquely qualified to lead the State Department through complex and challenging times."